Just picked up an Ipod Nano (4GB). I have a question regarding music buying...

What are the cheapest options for purchasing music (single songs mostly)? I know of itunes, and eMusic, but having trouble finding anything under .88 cents per song (Wal Mart). Is that just the going rate?

I have ZERO interest in using bittorrent or bearshare or any other "free" site. I want to pay for my music, I just want to pay the cheapest/legal way out there.

It seems Napster/Rhapsody/YMusic all are not compatible with downloading to my computer and then copying to my ipod, correct? If there was some other subscription service that allowed me to use the ipod, that would be fantastic.

Any help is appreciated.

Cheapest way to get music?

A good public library and iTunes' "Import" button

How are you buying your music from Wal-Mart and using it on your nano?

I haven't bought much from itunes as I prefer to buy the cd and rip it. One of my issues has been how much freedom the user agreement gives me on itunes. I have around 800 blank cds that I got cheap and burn cds for a drive, then throw it away all the time. Does itunes limit how many burns you can do?

I believe there are no restrictions on the number of burns you can do with non-DRM'ed music (e.g. the music you rip from your CDs). I think the limit is only on playlists that contain DRM'ed tracks, and then you can only burn those playlists seven times each. However, you are allowed to assemble DRM'ed tracks into different playlists and burn each of those playlists seven times, so any given song could be burned any number of times.

I have not tried this script, but it showed up in one of my news feeds and made me recall this thread:

Doug's AppleScripts Podcast Import

Since it is AppleScript, this obviously only works on Macs. It also uses the built-in Apache web server to somehow feed the file into iTunes as a podcast , so this must not be a common operation.

I use Allofmp3.com. I believe its legal (and if its not don't tell me). Price is based on how big the file is. Most songs cost between 6 and 10 cents, making it very reasonable. Because of the low prices I thought the service was a little shady but I was wrong. Its a great service and worth looking into.

So can you buy music from any of the country stores? I'm looking to pickup an album from that is available in the UK store that isn't available in the US store and was wondering if there are any hassles or extra strings that go with it.

Edit: I tried it and it looks like you are tied to one store. That sucks.

re: legality of allofmp3.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allofmp...lity_in_the_US

Just got my ipod (30gb) and put my music on it, now how does this iart part of it work, i would love to have my cd's album art on there, i noticed it did it automaticaly with the tunes i purchased thru itunes, but not with any of my other music i put on there, thanks a bunch.

Some options:
* search for the album on Amazon, select all the tracks, click and drag the album cover from the Amazon page to the album art window. Free, but manual; this is better when you're ripping/importing a couple cds at a time.
* Download Yahoo Widget Engine and the iTunes Companion widget. You can set it to 'scan entire library' and add artwork wherever it's missing. Free, but it's not 100%, I noticed some instances where it put the back cover on.
* Download [and pay for] iArt that automatically adds lyrics and/or album art work. 10 bucks, and the writer of the software frequents a couple ipod forums. This one is quite cool for lyrics, and does a pretty good job at artwork.
* Download itunes Art Importer. I haven't used this, but I've heard aboutit, and it's supposed to be pretty good. I believe it's free.

I'm sure there are other ways, but those are what i've done.

apologies if this is not the right thread to post this but i intend to upgrade to an ipod video soon - the new U2 one - and i was wondering if there any sites out there that provide free video downloads specifically for the ipod?

Not solely limited to the ipod, but if you go to the itunes music store and browse for video podcasts, there are quite a few free ones, ranging from product reviews to classic cartoons to serial adventures and more. Occasionally itunes will offer free episodes of certain shows.

Thanks alot, paid the 10 bucks and went with IArt now i've noticed that a few of my album covers are not right, any idea on how i go back and change them so they are correct...

To correct the mp3 coverart, right click on the song, or select all the songs on one album, and go to file, then "get info." Click on the Artwork tab and click delete. Then replace them with the coverat available at Amazon. You can just copy the image and then paste it where the art should be.

Even easier, you can drag-and-drop

Thanks a bunch to you and GuessWho, everything is good now, much appreciated...

About how mush space does adding the coverart take up? I have 30g but do not want to lose to much space.

Thanks for any info.

I've got a 60GB, something like 6500 songs, most with cover art, and I think my cover art was about 600 MB.
You can always get the cover art for use in itunes, then just uncheck 'show artwork on ipod' so it doesn't appear there.

How do you get itunes to "manage my music collection" - I can't find the option anywhere.

edit-> preferences -> advanced -> general
I checked 'keep itunes music folder organized' and
'copy files to itunes music folder when adding to library'
so now whenever I add tracks, assuming the ID3 tags are close to being right, they're placed in a folder in My Documents by Artist sub Album.
Re-importing existing tracks into itunes a couple folders at a time made it a lot easier to correct any funky id3 tags or artist/album/genre/track labels, though it was time consuming.

I've found that the best place for cover art is www.allmusic.com . These are usually around 200x200, which is the perfect size for the ipod and itunes. I think when I went through and changed all of mine to allmusic's covers, I saved a couple hundred megs. At that time, I had around 80 gigs of music.

How can you tell how much space the artwork takes up?

I enabled disk use, then plugged the ipod in and navigated to a directory on it, I think it's "IpodControl", and in there is an AlbumArtDatabase and a couple other album art files. This method isn't 100% accurate, but it gives me a close enough estimate.

I've been getting my coverart from Amazon.com--mndtrp, is allmusic's album art better? I think Amazon's are close to 200x200.

I'm trying to work on my funky id3 tags as well and this didn't quite do what I wanted. I want to organize some of my 2+ discs albums so they show up as one album. Will something like this work so I can just change the album folder name instead of going into each song and changing the id tag?

I asked this question in tech talk and it appears the answer is no.